Second Snowstorm of Week May Snarl U.S. Northeast Traffic

Boston faces as much as 6 inches of snow and ice as the second wintry storm of the week moves into the U.S. Northeast.

Central Park received 8 inches (20 centimeters) as of 4 p.m. yesterday, grounding thousands of flights as visiting Super Bowl fans tried to get home. Boston received about 1.6 inches. A state of emergency was declared in New Jersey, where the National Football League championship game was played Feb. 2.

“It’s going to be a whole potpourri of precipitation,” Kline said. “There’s certainly going to be enough to disrupt travel, not only on the ground but in the air as well.”

As of 5:15 a.m. New York time, 470 flights within, into or out of the U.S. today had been canceled, adding to the more than 2,000 flights that canceled yesterday, according to FlightAware, a Houston-based tracking service. New York’s LaGuardia and John F. Kennedy airports and New Jersey’s Newark Liberty had delays of as much as two hours, the Federal Aviation Administration said on its website.

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, in declaring an emergency, sent non-essential state workers home at noon and urged people to stay off the roads so that emergency crews could move around.

Man Killed

A 73-year-old man was killed in Brooklyn by a backhoe that was going in reverse during street-cleaning, WNBC-TV reported. Police said the backhoe was not a city snowplow.

The eastern U.S. from Detroit to Portland, Maine, may get several inches of snow before the latest storm tapers off late tomorrow and moves into the Atlantic, Kline said.

“Boston looks like it’ll be harder-hit than New York,” he said. “As you get into those western and northwestern suburbs of Boston, you might see anywhere from 6 to 12 inches.”

The system is forming off the U.S. Mid-Atlantic coastline, tracking just southeast of Nantucket, Massachusetts, a storm route that tends to produce the biggest accumulations of snow for the region, said Nicole Belk, a weather service meteorologist in Taunton, Massachusetts.

“We could be looking at a system affecting the Boston area through the entire day,” Belk said by telephone. “So the morning rush hour will be affected and also potentially the commute later in the day.”

NYC Outlook

New York is expected to get anywhere from 4 to 8 inches, with northern parts of Manhattan and the Bronx seeing the most, said Joe Pollina, a weather service meteorologist in Upton, on New York’s Long Island.

“It’ll start off as all snow, everywhere, and then change over to freezing rain between 4 a.m. and 5 a.m. through the morning,” Pollina said. “That’s going to be the concern with this storm — not just snow, but the ice we’ll see with it, because ice will weigh down on power lines. Not to mention the treacherous travel conditions that will ensue if the roads aren’t treated.”

The system is expected to pass through the Northeast into the Canadian Maritimes after tomorrow, Pollina said. More snow is possible for New York City over the weekend, AccuWeather said.